Monday, September 23, 2013

Day 2 .. Ghurkhas and Hmong

Awake
before our alarm and then had to wait to go down for breakfast which starts at
7.30am.Fair selection of fruit &
cooked stuff but I’ve never seen chocolate iced profiteroles on a breakfast
buffet before – oh well a first time for everything – and no I didn’t have one!

Chiang
Mai is tailoring central – they are everywhere but we’d been past a little guy
yesterday with a sign about the Ghurkha Tailor .. I’d read about him somewhere
so we decided to try our luck.Tony got
measured up for two of pairs of work pants & a couple of shirts.We picked the fabric from a really large
range, he paid a deposit and off we went in search of the Wororot Market and
Hmong Lane (I was on a fabric hunt)

We
walked from the Tha Phae gate down to the river, turned left and found the
markets.First stop was the Chiang Mai
flower market. North of here were it is higher and cooler they grow masses of temperate
climate flowers.The first part of the
market are all the growers & wholesalers - roses, chrysanthemums (white, yellow, pink and
an assortment of gaudy fluro greens, blues & pinks – these ones were pretty
yuk actually)What was amazing was the
selection of tropical flowers – Singapore orchids, ginger, heliconia, lotus and
alpinia and a huge selection of foliage.

Into
the Wororot Market itself – and if you have seen one huge Asian market (wet
& dry sections) you can easily imagine this one.By now it was getting really hot and we were
having no luck finding Hmong Lane and stupidly I’d forgotten the map!Back to the hotel.Lunch on the way at a little hole in the wall
restaurant across from the end of our little soi (side street) for the best
mango shake I have ever drunk!

Tony’s
knee was a bit sore from all the mornings walking so I headed out by myself to
track down Hmong Lane – this time armed with the trusty Nancy Chandler
map.Funny how easy things are to find
when you have a map – found in no time at all.I spent a couple of hours wandering through this market looking specifically
for traditional garments – and more specifically a jacket that a) would fit me
and b) did not have masses of orange in it.I saw lots of amazing textiles but came home empty handed except for a lovely
book on Thai Textiles that I bought from Backstreet Books.

I
did get to check out another of the Wats in Chiang Mai.. Wat Buppharam is
beautiful, but since I was wearing a sleeveless top I didn’t actually venture
inside the temple itself.

Chiang
Mai is famous for its Night Market so tonight’s agenda was a visit there. We
walked – and soon discovered it’s quite a bit more than the 15-20 min some maps
suggest.Dinner at the Ping Ping
restaurant (squid in basil & chilli and hottest green curry ever, washed
down with a cold Chang beer) the in the Anursan section then into the madness
that is the night market proper.Much
more stuff aimed at the tourists eager to part with their cash for an
obligatory “I heart Chiang Mai” t shirt or silk pillow cases.Fun none-the-less and we will probably go
back to explore more another night. We grabbed an iced coffee at a little stall
in the Kalare section of the night markets and had another foot massage - 100baht
for 30 minutes of torture.Jumped a tuk
tuk (thankfully Chiang Mai tuk tuk drivers are no-where near as crazy s their
Bangkok counterparts) back to the Tha Phae gate and home.